Most people see my size and my tattoos and they cower down or at least tread lightly. Not Jacob.
* * *
Sitting behind my desk, my eyes stayed glued to the monitor as I watched last night’s surveillance footage. I got in the habit of double checking that I or my staff didn’t miss something, especially when there’s an incident. Distraction could be as simple as a fight breaking loose, just enough time for someone malicious to be destructive.
Luckily I hadn’t found anything yet. I didn’t anticipate I would, but you could never be too careful with Teddy and his fucking antics. I wasn’t too worried about getting shut down or anything like that. What I was most worried about was the privacy of my members being breached.
I opened club Crawl as a safe space to practice kinks without judgment. A safe haven for your dirtiest fantasies to be played out and experienced. There are some very important people who pay a lot of money for the discretion of this club. If anything should jeopardize that discretion, it would ruin me and my club for my members, some who are genuinely good people.
Protecting what’s mine is my main priority. I don’t care what it takes.
* * *
I sat back in my chair and rubbed my hand down my face. Letting out a big sigh, I hadn’t been able to concentrate all damn day, wondering if Delaney had gotten my gift. The handwritten note left with it had my phone number attached so I was hoping to hear from her. I knew I probably wouldn’t get a thank you, she’s too bratty for that – but I thought maybe at least she would call and tell me how disgusted she was with the explicit items that were in there.
The morning was turning into afternoon and it had been crickets.
I stood as my chair scooted across the marble flooring, echoing throughout my office.
I wasn’t going to waste another minute waiting for her to call me, I’m too stubborn for that. I pulled my phone out and dialed Jacob. He was helping Enzo with installing the extra cameras we ordered and had expedited.
“Sir,” he breathed into the phone clearly out of breath.
Enzo had him doing all the climbing, up and down the ladder while he supervised. I saw Jacob nearly lose his footing and stopped himself from tumbling, when I was watching the monitor a bit ago.
Walking out the front door toward my SUV I snapped instructions at Enzo.
“Jacob let’s go, and get me the number to Exhale Publishing.”
Strangely familiar…
Delaney
Iwoke up late. Thanks to Lacy ditching me at Crawl last night, I was rushing around to get ready for a Saturday brunch, with some potential clients.
When I moved back to L.A, Lacy stuck her neck out and got me a job at one of her littlefriend’spublishing companies, where I could put my degree to use. I got hired almost immediately as an editor but quickly moved up to head the entire department.
“Where are my keys?” I shouted to no one. I needed to be at the restaurant by 10:00. I was cutting it too close.
“Ugh, I should put one of those stupid trackers on them.” I always said that but never actually did it. It was only ever a good idea when I was frustrated and in a hurry.
I darted toward the front door, hoping I had left them in the lock last night. Again. I have a bad habit of leaving them there, especially if I am in a rush. Stupid I know, but in this case, I’d be grateful.
I swung the door open, anticipating the jingle of the many pendants I had attached to the two keys that were on them but instead, I saw a black box on my welcome mat. I knew immediately where it came from when I saw the club Crawl logo on it. I picked it up first, assuming it was for Lacy, but the small red envelope that fell to my feet had my name written across it.
I stepped out of the doorway looking around to see if whoever left this box was still close by, but there was no one. I left it on my bed and kept looking for my keys. After ten minutes and a ton of arguing with myself, I finally found them. By then I was already running late.
* * *
I pulled up to the restaurant, smoothed down the fabric of my skirt, took a deep breath and walked in to meet Lindsey Liles, an up and coming dark romance author. We signed her onto our publishing firm a couple of weeks ago. She got one of the biggest advances I had ever seen given to an inexperienced author before. Today we were going to go over her plot ideas and deadlines.
When I walked in I was surprised to see she wasn’t alone. There was a man with her.
She spotted me almost immediately. She must have a great memory because I had only met her once in passing when she signed her contract. I could have spotted her though, she had a distinctive mole on her nostril. It was small and made her look dignified, in a way.
“Good morning,” she and her guest stood to shake my hand.
“Yes, good morning. Thank you for meeting me today. It’s a pleasure to see you again.” I reached my hand out to shake the gentleman’s hand. He took it and gripped the ends of my fingers, bringing them to his mouth where he pressed a small kiss to them.
